1. Technical Field
This invention relates to the cutting of food product with hydraulic food cutting apparatus. More particularly, this invention relates to an improved blade assembly for cutting segments of food product from soft core food stuff such as pickles, tomatoes, etc.
2. Background Art
Heretofore, soft core fruits and vegetables necessarily have been cut or sliced by mechanical means which are cumbersome, of low tonnage capacity, and expensive.
As an alternative to mechanical cutters for solid core vegetable products, a class of devices known as hydroknives were developed. Hydroknives suspend the food product in a carrier medium, usually water, and pump it through an alignment and acceleration tube which is similar in shape and function to the front half of a venturi, and from there into a longitudinal passageway holding a cutter blade assembly. The food product, traveling at speeds of approximately 60 feet per second, impinges against the cutter blade assembly and is cut into a plurality of segments. Such hydroknife cutting apparatus have the distinct advantage of higher capacity when compared to their mechanical counterparts, but until now, have been limited to solid core food stuffs. This is simply a consequence of the physics of the device, which operates on the basic principle of momentum. Unfortunately, the forces encountered during the deceleration of the food stuff due to impact with the cutter blades, cause deformation of the soft core food stuff and result in the soft core food stuffs being ripped apart.
F. G. LAMB, ET AL., U.S. Pat. No. 3,109,468, discloses a typical hydraulic cutting apparatus wherein solid core food stuffs to be cut, namely potatoes, are dropped into a tank filled with water and then pumped through conduit into an alignment chute wherein the vegetables are aligned and accelerated to a high speed before impinging upon a cutter blade assembly. Here, the potato core is cut into a plurality of french fries and the peripheral area of potato is sliced off and diverted from the main flow of core product for later retrieval for other uses. The cutter blade assembly as taught by LAMB, is incapable of efficiently cutting soft core vegetable stuffs without the vegetable being torn apart, as the frictional resistance encountered at the cutting edge is simply too great.
BROWN, ET AL., U.S. Pat. No. 4,300,429, teaches a cutter blade assembly which cuts french fry strips of varying cross-sectional area to compensate for the non-uniform solids content between the center of the potato and the peripheral areas so that the end product french fries will cook at a uniform rate. Like LAMB, the BROWN ET AL device is not suitable for cutting soft core food stuffs, as the resistance encountered in this cutting arrangement is greater than that of the Lamb device.
Generally speaking, the prior art cutter assemblies all have an array of blades, usually in matching pairs, which cut simultaneously, thus causing substantial resistive forces upon impact of the vegetable's skin with the cutter blades. The resulting stress literally tears the soft core food stuffs apart from the inside out.
My U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/344,241, incorporated herein by reference, teaches a staggered cutting blade array which greatly reduces the resistive forces experienced by solid core food stuffs during the cutting process. This cutter configuration works well for cutting solid core vegetables, such as potatoes or the like, into strips or "strings" of very small cross-sectional area. However, even this configuration does not work well for cutting soft core fruits and vegetables such as cucumbers, pickles, tomatoes, etc.
What is needed is a hydraulic cutter blade assembly which is capable of cutting soft core vegetables when used in a typical hydraulic cutting apparatus without causing cell damage to the interior of the vegetable.
Accordingly, it is an object of this invention to provide a cutter blade assembly which can be utilized in a hydraulic food cutting apparatus to cut a soft core food product. It is a further object of this invention to provide a blade assembly for a hydraulic food cutting apparatus for cutting soft core fruits and vegetables into slices or slabs. It is still a further object of this invention to provide a blade assembly for a hydraulic food cutting apparatus for cutting soft core fruits and vegetables into strips or strings having a relatively small cross-sectional area.